


Brier Obliges

by SHIBUIKING (Heeshura)



Series: Hex Obliges [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Georgian Period, Lovecraftian, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 04:18:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18024542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heeshura/pseuds/SHIBUIKING
Summary: Prequel to Hex Obliges.Set in 1808, the story of how Wilfred and Jervas met, and how Jervas lost his eyes.Hex Obliges is unfinished and so is this, but it won't have any spoilers until I've written up to the relevant parts in Hex Obliges.





	Brier Obliges

**Author's Note:**

> Art is in my art blog [tag](http://shibuiking.tumblr.com/tagged/hex-obliges).

Wilfred Brierhart was not born into a wealthy family; he lived with his parents in the outskirts of Ruxley, the grand city walls of Great Oxmere towering overhead and casting shadow over his day to day life. Sailors came to and fro the streets, carts carrying peddlers and travellers long weary, citizens hawking their wares and trades to the dense masses from beyond the walls; ‘tis a busy place to live, and one quite unfortunate for a child as shy and withdrawn as young Wilfred. His parents are candle-makers and carvers, his head filled with the knowledge before he could even read or write, they are not rich nor terribly poor— there’s food on the table and clothes for their backs— yet luxuries do elude the Brierharts and their only child is raised without.  
Wilfred does not curse or despise his lot in life, he’s well content with the virtues he has been given, though he is of reserved disposition and anxious mind.  
It’s one foggy afternoon that he meets little Jervas Hex, a mere year younger than his own fourteen, and his life is forever changed perhaps for the worst.

His father had painted to him a grand picture of the opera, where men and women, and those in-between, paint in turn their own pictures of battles long past, ancient tragedies, lewd comedies. The sea fret had rolled in fiercely that morning at the northern city gates, but nothing could stop the bejewelled carriages and feathered steeds from being seen past the shroud; glimmering and glittering, the light piercing straight through. Not an uncommon sight to someone who watches the gates as often as Wilfred, but exciting nonetheless. Overcome with his curiosity, he follows one such carriage on it’s short journey north; past the endless stalls and hazy streets, dim clouds overhead barely visible through the white gloom, he’s lead like a rabbit into the wolf’s den.  
The carriage stops in front of an imposing building, and he immediately recognises it to be the house of opera. Tall, elegant, a little piece of the luster of the crown in these slums, a haven for the working class and patrons of the arts. People shift around him in a tizzy, as if he’s stood in the middle of a river, the water lapping and forming around him as he takes in the sight, the smell, the feel. Tall windows climb up to the domed towers flanking the entrance, it’s doors more than double the size— in reality it’s a simple building, cheap entertainment for the low earning, but so unknown to young Wilfred’s virgin mind that it must be the grandest thing he’s ever laid eyes on.   
So he ventures in.

The busy workers pay no mind the scruffy child who’s wandered in, too busy with their own agendas to care, and so he finds himself inside the main building, seats all around him and the stage in front. It’s a long few minutes of wide-eyed staring before he notices a boy around his age looking his way with an amused expression. The boy looks at home here, small though he were, the aura of elegance breaches even Wilfred’s dull mind. The intensity of his stare transfixes him.  
“I’d ask you what you’re doing here, but I imagine it’ll be rather boring. So I shan’t.” The boy speaks with surprising clarity, and an accent so clearly enunciated it’s unheard of around Ruxley. He moves next to Wilfred and seats himself.  
Wilfred has no words with which to give, the majesty of the scene too much for him.  
The boy looks him over with a bored eye this time and gets up, apparently losing interest in any non-forthcoming answers.  
“Well, take your time.”

When Wilfred looks again, he’s gone. Feeling overwhelmed he makes his exit soon after, weaving back through the river of people and onto the misty street. He must’ve been in there for more than he realised, for the scenery appeared darker than before; ink seeping through the fret.  
He keeps his head down and hurries home, for fear of the fish that lurk in the dark.

He doesn’t tell his parents about what happened that day, choosing to stay inside and work the following week. Yet the boy in the opera doesn’t leave his head. If Wilfred were to tell someone about him, he feared that it’d realise itself as merely a resplendent vision. So he tells no-one, never journeys to the opera ever again, and busies himself in learning the trade of his family. The wax moulds to his touch, heeding the call of a Brierhart perhaps, and he learns quickly. The talent for carving and sculpting runs in his blood, his parents tell him as they show him their own creations.  
‘My boy, candle-makers are not a lucrative sort, and yet we still earn our bread. Gas lamps are all the rage now, you know. The times are changing, and so must we.’ His father had tapped his pipe into a small tray before continuing, filling the room with smoke thereafter. ‘You will learn to sculpt, like the old Roman masters, you will. We serve the nobility with every breath, and our creations will do no less. I did once heard a man say that there are two types of beauty; that which burns brightly, and that which lasts forever.’  
Wilfred had not understood his father’s speech, but working hard was something he could do, he told himself. Until his parents are pleased and money flows.

Yet the opera still haunts him; it festers like poison within his veins, dragging him hither with it’s sweet siren call. Wilfred finds himself yet again in front of the grand house, swimming against the current. He is all but swept away when a voice calls out.  
The feathered man is a lot for Wilfred to take in, and yet a rock in the stream— so he follows.  
“This is hardly a place for a young boy like you.” The man’s voice is heavily accented, though Wilfred knows not of what place, and he’s dressed in the fashion of a masque.  
Wilfred looks down shamefully, unable once again to form an answer in the face of splendour unknown.  
“Come on lad, I won’t bite. What’s your name?”

“Wilfred, sir. Wilfred Brierhart.”

“Well, little Sir Brierhart, I noticed you last time you came in. It’s a bit of a delight to see someone your age take interest.“  
The man brandishes a glass of wine as he talks, an indecent sight on the street— even Wilfred knows this— and the feathers atop his shoulders sway in the movement. He’s wearing what looks to be a very expensive suit, adorned with little gold buttons and cufflinks, sequins running alongside the seams, and in garish colours. Certainly the kind of man you’d see around an opera, and nowhere else.

“It’s all rather… grand.” 

The man barks a laugh at this and continues talking. “So it is. I do hope you can help me with something, lad. Just a small favour for a small man, yes?”  
Wilfred inclines his head, curious.  
“The other boy you saw in here; blonde, blue eyes, carries himself like a upstart king. Can you speak to him? Quite frankly, he’s scaring my workers, terribly superstitious lot they are, and I’d rather have him gone without a fuss.”  
The man doesn’t wait for a response.  
“Well, good day, little sir. I’m a busy man, so please consider my request, hm? Oh, I should introduce myself in turn, shouldn’t I? Claudio Fuentes, proud owner of this house.” He makes a tipping hat gesture, despite the lack of one atop his head, and saunters inside the building.  
Wilfred, unsure of what to make of the strange encounter, doesn’t venture inside this time.

The days turn to a week before he visits the house again, needing to consolidate his courage before he faces off with this strange Phantom of the Opera, but once more he finds himself pulled inside. Empty again, as it is a Sunday, and Wilfred meets the boy who smells of sea salt once more. He wears a simple sailor suit, a style Wilfred has never seen before on a child, a straw hat and pristine little black shoes; the dark blue and white complimenting the barley of his hair and light blue of his eyes. The boy looks like a aristocrat’s child, but the lingering smell of the sea puts those ideas from Wilfred’s mind, though he’s no less noble in his own fantasies.  
“You again?” A commanding voice comes from the boy, surprising Wilfred.

Mr. Fuentes’ request fills Wilfred with puissant energy as he retorts, “You shouldn’t say that as if you’re meant to be here!”

“I’ll say whatever I damn well please.”  
Hearing a curse upon the lips of someone his own age robs Wilfred, with a gasp, of any answer he might’ve had.  
“If I want to loiter here, then I shall.”

“The owner said you’re scaring people!”

“That’s their problem, not mine. ”  
He walks up to Wilfred and prods him in the chest, puffing his own out and looking all rather smug.  
“You, though, might be fun. You should come explore with me sometime! What’s your name?”

“Wilfred...”

“Then Jervas demands that Wilfred meet him outside here on the morn of tomorrow!”

He sputters. “What? But I have- my parents… I can’t just- ”

“You can and you will!” Jervas laughs and the salty scent follows him out of the doors, his voice echoing without care for those who might hear. The king has laid his command, and Wilfred supposes that he must find some way to follow, compelled to follow this spirit of inquiry wherever it may lead.  
With that, Wilfred and Jervas meet day after day, bleeding into eventful weeks, and soon Wilfred’s mind is filled with excitement and wonder at the world beyond the city gates. His parents, overjoyed at the signs of their son’s new friend, let him wander at will, hoping fervently that it may help the boy’s budding anxiety and diffidence. 

So it is one day that the two find themselves in the woods next to The Mere, the immense lake sitting just outside the city, parallel to the coastline, and not far from where Jervas lives. A simple boarding house at the shore for all children left behind by their seafaring genitors, tended to by old maids looking to be paid in lodgings and food.   
Jervas had brought him to the woods oftentimes before, showing him the tree hollow he reads in, claiming that he gets no peace at all in that accursed house. Wilfred learns of the distaste he holds for his fellow sea orphaned children, and Jervas’ interest in strange happenings, horror stories and slumbering gods. Wilfred does not press that subject further and Jervas does not tell. He’d rather been surprised to learn that Jervas could read at all, his own education lacking in that area, and Jervas proudly tells him of his endeavour to learn on his own, and of the books he’d found lying around— Wilfred suspects there’s far more to that than he wishes to know, and learns very quickly to press little of what he says.  
So when Jervas invites him to see a queer mansion in the woods, Wilfred would much rather stay at home. Yet the monarch’s commands cannot be denied, he thinks bitterly to himself.

The mansion is an old rundown thing, like nothing Wilfred has ever seen; the windows smashed, walls blackened, wood eroded and smelling peculiarly familiar. The door swings on rusted hinges, barely hanging onto the wall, and the roof is half caved in, flooding the foyer with daylight and showcasing the dreadful state of the interior. It must have been a fire, Wilfred thinks, for furniture lay scattered around in disarray, as if the tenants were in a hurry to leave— and evidently to never return.   
Jervas tells him it was likely a lightning strike, as he makes himself quite at home upon a scarred wooden chair.   
“Though I’ve asked a few people living around here and none of them knew what on earth I was on about. It’s as if this place doesn’t exist.”  
Wilfred doesn’t press.  
They explore the house, one more timidly than the other, and soon find beneath debris an old trapdoor. Common in houses this large, Jervas tells him, and Wilfred wonders how he knows so much about it. They move what pieces are light enough, but the trapdoor allows them not, for they cannot move the bulk of the debris.   
They don’t talk about the mansion when they return back from it’s depths, but Wilfred knows that Jervas is gripped feverishly by it’s mystery, visiting it often without him and looking far more haggard and tired than usual. Books, he says, are what he’s found beneath the door— finally opened apparently— books and scrolls and hastily scribbled notes.   
Wilfred meets Mr. Fuentes again one day in the streets near home. ‘Ware that devil child,’ he’s told. The words stick.

It’s on his way home after a visit to the baker’s that it happens. A sharp pain to the back of his head and the next thing he knows he’s back in the mansion, water caressing his face like a concerned mother, and he knows this is the basement behind the trapdoor.


End file.
